The room was very hot, for he’d lit the gas fire to air the sheets and things.  He had thought of everything.  He had even thought of hanging Viola’s nightgown over the back of a chair before the fire, and setting her slippers ready for her feet.  He had laid her brush and comb on the little rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles, in the recess.  He had unpacked her little trunk and put her things away all folded in the big rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles.  He had hung the rosebud chintz curtains at the window and fitted its rosebud chintz cover on the low chair by the fire.  And now he was kneeling on the floor, tucking in the blankets and smoothing the pillow for her head.  His mouth was just a little open.  And he was smiling.

You couldn’t hate him.

He said he’d come and see me off at the Tube Station.  But he didn’t start.  He began walking about, opening drawers and looking at things.

Presently he gave a cry of joy.  He had found what he was looking for, a rosebud chintz coverlet.  He spread it on the bed and said, “There!” He brought in an old Persian rug (small but very beautiful) from the landing and spread it on the floor by the mattress and said, “That’s a bit of all right.”  And he told me he was going to beeswax the floor to-morrow.  There was nothing to beat oak-stain and beeswax for a floor.

He stood there gazing.  He was so pleased with his work that he couldn’t tear himself away.

He said, “The joke is that she thinks she’s going to find this room looking like a Jew pawnbroker’s shop when, she turns in, and that she’ll have the time of her life putting it straight for me.”

Then he took my arm and led me away, shutting the door carefully, so that nothing, he said, should break the shock of her surprise.

But there was one drop of bitterness in his cup—­“If only I could have set up that tester!”

I said he’d had quite enough excitement for one day and that he really must leave something for to-morrow.

On our way to the Tube Station I told him that I was going down to Canterbury in a day or two.  I told him what I was going for.  He had been so happy thinking about his house and his furniture and Viola that I don’t believe he’d ever thought about the Thesigers.  At the word “Canterbury” he thrust out his lower jaw so that the tips of his little white teeth were covered (they always disappeared when he was angry).

He said:  “Tell that old sinner I don’t care a copper damn whether he recognizes me or not.  What I can’t stand and won’t stand is the slur he’s putting on my wife.”

* * * * *

And that is more or less what I did tell him.

I wired to the Canon to let him know I was coming, and he replied by asking me to stay for the week-end.